Trapped Cries

******TRIGGER WARNING******

“Shit! It’s raining!” is something I say far too much during the summer months and as luck would have it, my washing is predictably outside. As surely as my clothes become heavier with the dampening rain; my mood plummets. I race downstairs, throw my shoes on and rush into the oncoming torrent of pelting abuse the rain offers to me. There is no easy way to do this quickly. Grab clothing, unpeg on both sides, throw clothing into basket, throw pegs into bag, rinse and repeat the necessary amount of times. This process that I seem to fulfil every weekend during our delightful British weather casts my mood into a shadowy dungeon. I am easily frustrated as I try to hurry my movements; as I try to stop an oncoming panic attack. The rain drenches me like cancer overrides the body; quickly, angrily and with no reprieve in sight. I am wet enough to need a change of clothing and I’m not blind to the irony of the situation but it’s not funny. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the kitchen knife as I walk past the counter and I know there is a part of me that has been awakened by the fresh frustrations and this part of me now wants to cut.

There is no reason for me to blame myself for this new situation. The weather changes and it is sporadic at best in the UK. I know this. My mood so often shifts like the weather. It is so predictably unpredictable. - From sunny to stormy in a split second. The anger surges through me and it feels electric; I could spark an entire war with this anger that I feel. I cast aside my washing as I enter my room. There is no point in attempting to dry it here. This room cannot house such a saturated mess in need of such warmth. It is not lost on me that my clothes are now like my heart.

My legs shake violently as I try to maintain the composure to write this. Putting a barrier up to the anger is difficult and it requires so much of my strength that I am worried I will not stop the panic in time. I am panicking a lot. My plan for the washing did not go my way. I was taken out of my comfort zone as swiftly as ice melting in a fire and this panic, though familiar to me, is not something that I can suppress all that easily. It is a panic linked with my PTSD. Air rips through my body, grating at my insides as I try to breathe and with crushing speed, I am 12 years old again.

I am standing outside the back door of my childhood home in my swimming costume as the sun streams down on me. It is the first warm day in a while and the patio warms my bare feet. My swimming costume is a mixture of black and bright blue; my favourite colour. I’m excited to go in the pool that my Dad has put up in the back garden. I am happy. The weekend is here and I have done all of my homework and household chores. I can just swim in the pool and relax just like a normal 12 year old.

I don’t make it to the pool. My brother comes outside, which confuses me because I didn’t know that he was home. Maybe he just got back from somewhere. I don’t really know and I don’t really care. My brother and I argue an awful lot. I hate him; quite honestly not that anybody would see or believe that from me.

“Let’s play a game”, he says to me. I figure that’s okay because it’s sunny; maybe he wants to play a water game or something; I don’t even know what games you’d play in a pool this small. He is 15. I am 12. He goes back inside to the kitchen while I wait for him, longingly looking at the pool. The pool is always best on the first day that it is put up, before the flies have had their chance at swimming in it and the leaves have settled upon the glistening surface. When the pool is full of flies, it always reminds me of the outside swimming pools in France; they’re always full of unsuspecting, dead flies when we arrive for our holidays. That always makes me feel sick. Our pool isn’t like that today though. There are no flies. The water is unsullied; just waiting for me.

My brother comes back from the kitchen after a minute or two and he is holding the bag with the pegs in it. I am confused because I don’t know of a game you can play with pegs and we don’t have any washing to put on the line. I’m ready to swim in the pool; not play an imaginary game. I don’t ask him what the game is because I figure he’ll tell me soon and I’m not going to waste my words on this question. I stand and stare at him, waiting.

The game is not a game. The game is an act by him. He thinks that calling it a game makes it okay. “It’s only a game” is such a common phrase. This is not a game and this is not okay but my words are trapped in my throat and I don’t know how to escape from this. He is older than me and he is bigger than me. I have felt the sharp, quick thud of his trainers against my body before; his hands have struck me many times and I have no wish for this to be repeated. I am frozen in time. I am frozen and terrified. My breath catches.

“Let’s see how many pegs we can put on you”. He is smiling. This is not funny to me. I don’t want to smile. I don’t understand this. I’m pretty sure he shouldn’t be touching me there at all. I wasn’t sure when I was 6 or even when I was 10 but now I am 12 and I’m pretty sure this isn’t right. There is nothing that I can do though. I am powerless. There’s a question in my mind but it doesn’t invite the same excitement within me as it does him. I have a rising panic within me as I wonder how many pegs can be attached to my private parts. I do not ask why. I do not say no. I do not kick, scream, yell or fight against him. It is like I am drowning in quick sand with nobody to pull me out and no branch in sight.

“Lift your swimming costume out of the way, right there.”

“Hold this for me.”

“Just pull that out of the way while I put this here.”

“I said hold it out of the way! Don’t let go of it, idiot!”

“There. All finished. Let go of the skin now and let me count them.”

The answer is more than 10. The answer is that it hurts. I am mortified. I wish I could die right now. I do not want to be alive like this. He is proud of his achievement. He walks away, smiling; leaving me to shamefully remove these objects. I do not cry. I do not look. I take them off one by one; ignoring the pain. I wash them in the kitchen sink. I go to the toilet and I get on with my day.

This is one of those things that happen to me. There is nobody to ask for help. There is nothing to do but pretend it hasn’t bothered me.

I never stopped to think about my back garden being an open space. I didn’t stop to wonder if the people in the nursing home behind our house could see what happened or whether my neighbours were looking out of the window. There was a blind spot at my childhood house. If you were to stand on the patio in a certain place, you wouldn’t be seen by anybody looking out of any of the windows at the back of the house. We weren’t stood in that place. Anybody could have seen. But if anybody did; nobody did anything to help.